In modern times, the expansion of computer use into day-to-day life has created an entirely new concept of what exists. Many industries have embraced the concept of creating separate digital worlds, some mimicking the real world, and some mimicking fantasy worlds. When combined with the internet, these digital worlds allow people to interact with one another regardless of where the individual resides in the real world. Because people can interact with individuals from all over the world, large social networks have been created and due in part to the global scale of the communities, these large social networks have become immensely popular and robust.
Particularly, various rudimentary internet communities have sprung up, each with their own unique attributes. In order to interact with one another, various people create online personas, sometimes embodied by a three dimensional character. The character may be pre-selected, and often the character is customizable by a user. For example, many people might want to give their character specific clothing or accessories and the digital world might enable the user to do this.
One major facet of these online communities is that people create a connection to their character and the community in which the character resides. This has allowed developers of these communities to bring in revenue by providing characters with accessories by charging the user small fee. However, many people may wish to be even more connected to their character, yet there are few ways of actually achieving this goal. While it may seem unusual to an outside observer that a user might feel such a strong connection to what is considered a fictional creation, the character is real to the user.
With people spending more and more time in these online communities and forming such strong connections to the virtual world and their characters which reside therein, the lines between what is real and what is virtual seem to be blurring. To this end, people may want to express their virtual world characteristics in the real world.
U.S. Published Patent Application No. 2007/0168357, filed by Mo is an example of a reference that discloses a system for recommending merchandise that involves the creation of an avatar. The Mo system for virtual shopping includes a plurality of Internet apparel shopping malls. Mo further discloses using a user's personal information to create an avatar as well as a merchandise recommending system. Importantly, Mo fails to disclose that the avatar is portable and widgetized, such that said avatar may reside as a non-static content on at least two unique and partially static web pages. Further, Mo fails to that the items presented for sale, or recommended to the user are related to the personal information of said user. Mo also fails to disclose an upsell engine that provides a user with an option to purchase one or more additional items related to the item purchased by the user for the avatar, or that the upsell item can be a real world item for the user, not the avatar.
Thus, there exists a need for people to express characteristics of their virtual characters in the real world by wearing, using, or displaying clothing, charms, and other accessories that are related to the avatar or accessories purchased for the avatar.